Deep dive into the Big Five Personality Test and General Applications/Trends in Society
Will be populating this with analysis on:
When discussing the Big Five, there are several bits of terminology that needs to be understood:
Trait: “Person’s typical style of thinking, feeling, and acting in different kinds of situations and at different times” (Costa and McCrae 1988). Traits can be used to predict certain behaviors.
Personality: “Pattern of relatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person’s behavior.” They’re acquired through life experiences and are relatively stable.
Temperament: “Physical, mental, and emotional traits people are born with.”
Many consider temperament as a subset of personality. However, temperament often has their own model, with different traits. This model is called the CBQ (Children’s Behavior Questionnaire) and the three traits are:
Notice the overlap between the two - we’re only missing openness and agreeableness. However, despite the similarities, it should be acknowledged that the Big Five aims to cover personality traits, while integrating temperament into the mix.
While we’re talking about definitions, I should also clarify extroversion. The Big Five uses Eysenck’s concept of extroversion rather than Jung’s.
Eysenck: Extroverts gain and recharge their mental energy from external stimuli, such as social interaction. Introverts prefer to shield themselves from external stimuli and recharge their mental energy through withdrawing themselves.
Jung: Extroverts seek action and sensory input from the external world, using their experiences to influence themselves. Introverts immerse themselves in their internal environment, through reflection, dreaming, and understanding [themselves].
This clarification may be redundant – many people have only heard of Eysenck’s version of extroversion, as society tends to use his version as the ‘only’ version. However, I still find value in acknowledging Jung’s definition, especially because Eynsenck built his off of Jung’s.
“Can you find a taxonomy to describe human personality?”
That’s the idea that started the Big Five Personality Test. We wanted to understand human personality and map it out qualitatively. We needed to use the power of science to obtain even more knowledge!
Scientists have been interested in personality since the 1880s, with the first official study of personality done by Gordon Allport and Henry Odbert in 1936. First, they gathered 18000 personality-describing words from the Webster’s Dictionary. Then, using this list, found 4504 adjectives to describe non-physical characters, creating the first ‘personality wordbank’.
Then, in 1943, Raymond Cattel reduced this wordbank to ~160 traits, removing any words with similar meanings. He proceeded to add 22 more words to describe “interest” and “abilities”, then created “personality cultures” to group these words. By 1948, he narrowed it down to 36 terms with 12 personality cultures.
In 1947, Eysenck introduced his book “Dimensions of Personality”, creating his own version of “Extraversion” and coining the term “Neuroticism”.
In 1949, Donald Fiske takes 22 terms from Cattell’s study, and creates give main categories: “Social Adaptability”, “Emotional Control”, “Conformity”, “Inquiring Intellect”, and “Confident Self-expression”. This is the beginning of the Big Five test.
Although this test has undergone several revisions and expansions from various other researchers (i.e. Norman (1967), Smith (1967), McCrae and Costa (1987), and more), the purpose and ideas within the test remain.
There’s a lot of reasons why the Big Five is such a popular test and remains at the forefront of personality research.
As we grow older, our traits are going to naturally develop and change. For example, as you get older, you tend to have higher conscientiousness and agreeableness and lower neuroticism, extroversion, and openness. This is mainly because people tend to have more responsibilities (i.e. family, job, etc.) as they age, and eventually learn to build traits to adapt. This is called the maturation effect.
However, after adolescence, people’s traits tend to stabilize, ensuring there are distinct behavior patterns to analyze. This consistency (leading to replicability) is desirable for scientists.
Widely accepted by the scientific community Many scientists have conducted studies to confirm the validity and reliability of the Big Five Personality Test. This includes Satow, 2021 and Kamarulzaman and Nordin, 2012). Using confirmatory factor analysis, invariance analysis, and various other empirical tests, the Big Five test is considered to be validated and reliable, and is now the most widely accepted test within this niche.
Very easily repeatable Scientists value repeatability. Got a fascinating result? Make sure to do the experiment 2 more times, just in case something was off!
The Big Five test is easily repeatable, as it’s generally delivered as a 50-question Likert scale test. It can easily be printed and distributed to thousands of participants, ensuring consistency between studies.
And why is this important? add consluiosn
Origins: “It all stemmed from the idea of: can you find a taxonomy to describe human personality?” Trying to find empirical research At first, just chose words that described “conspicuous aspects of the character”, but later has been refined Robert McCrae and Paul Costa in the ’80s and ’90s. Is where it now stems from
Used eysenck’s concept of extroversion rather than jung’s Jung: an extrovert seeks intensive contact with the outside world seeking action and sensory input. An introvert instead focuses their energy internally, on reflection, dreaming and understanding. Eysenck’s: they gain and recharge their mental energy. By nature, introverted people have a higher level of brain activity and therefore feel a greater need to shield themselves from external stimuli. Each has 6 different subtraits
Strengths of Big Five Stay relatively stable during adulthood Conscientiousness and agreeable increase, with neutocism, extraversion, and openness decrease with age Predictable based on life’s responibiltiies, called “maturation effect” Accepted as a pretty empirical framework in the scientific world Lots of validity (various tests that are very imperical) Most widely accepted Very easily repeatable Broad scope of traits, and generalizatin gpersonality traits cross-culture and environments Mutually exclusive
Limitations of the Big Five Personality Test
Although this test samples hundreds of locations, it’s not completely representative of the population it claims to show.
Notice that a majority of our responses come from western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WIRED) populations, with less developed countries (such as the ones in Africa) often have a lot less.
Not only that, but the Big Five doesnt seem to have the same results when testing non-WIRED popualtiosn. Iot showed that conscientiousness doesn’t correlate with income (10/14 countries) and extraversion and agreeabless also show a negative correlation. On the other hand, emotional stability and opness show more of a positive correlation. People care more about cognitive ability
Other tests also show that there’s a correlation between extraoversion and job performance, or there is just no correlation. These results vary a lot (in relation to performance) -> not as standarized as people think
Onlyu 25% fo respondents in these severys have college education, compared to 81% of internet data
Cognitive ability can affect people’s ability of abstract Big Five questions. People often mmisplace items. Basically only emotional stability shoudl be correlated with income Strangely, openness also seems to be an income Could be a result of biases
Need to develop better udnerstaning of developmental countries to measure specific personality traits
Openness is a little bit funny, since different genders actually interpret it differently
Males were more e “imaginative” and “inquisitive”, even more specifically for the patriarchal cutlureal context in Turkey, where there are veys trict gender roles
Males are encouraged to pursue what they want, while women are often shoved into a hole of what they should do instead, and monitored to be socailized into a rule-abidng lifestyle
This is less prevalent in WIRED societies
In addition, openness is kinda varied, and can signify be impacted by culture, does this matter? Is that still the reason person? Is it what they truly think, or were they just taught to think that?
Motivation, have varied experiences, rqeuies a vision and aestehticen sentivity and a willingness not abondnet traditions, so it might have different meaning in cultural contexts.
This is also impacted in China, where Openness doesn’t appear ince the Chinese Personality Assessment Inventory, as it’s a far more western-centric trait, rather than collectivist cultures.
For example, women consistently report higher Neuroticism, Agreeableness, warmth (an extraversion facet) and openness to feelings, and men often report higher assertiveness (a facet of extraversion) and openness to ideas as assessed by the NEO-PI-R.[153]
That is, men in highly developed world regions were less neurotic, less extraverted, less conscientious and less agreeable compared to men in less developed world regions.
Women didnt’ change
Do males need more resources? Women’s natural deposition is more stable than men’s? Evolutionary pressures,
Failure on the Test’s end, do we need to test it in more varied contests?
Ignore spirituality and religioucity
Essential component of every culture and greatly influences behaviour
Relicioustiy is shown to correlate with agreeableness and concicenciousness
Also neutocism sometimes(?)
Religion can’t just be considered as ‘social attitudes’ and should be reated as another trait (refer back to definition of personality?) Six subtrats, relicious faith, commitment, self-transendence Icnreidbly important in Arab adn Islamic personlitieis/states, as they’re intertwined with their being, and likely should be considered when trying to describe who one is
Etic Approach: Traits are universal regalrdess of environment, culture or context Emic = culture specific Etic is too simplicitse, as everybody is teh same liek chemical elements and does not account for human diversity (which is wider than biological diversity) Man’s last resort when in different circumstances
People use different questions with different amount of questiosn -> how can this lead to standarized measurement (44 items, 25 items, etc.)
Argument about Manipulestness, honestly, seductiveness, thrifitness, humor. Humility
Humility subtraits: Facets: Sincerity, Fairness, Greed Avoidance, Modesty Low levels of the Honesty-Humility factor are associated with greater levels of materialism, unethical business practices and deviant sexual behavior. Associated with dark triad
Lexical hypothesis and how does that affect Positive and negative affects how someone interpreits Basically social and negativity bias -> how someone interpretes it is going to skew ther result
What even is personality “pattern of r elatively permanent traits and unique characteristics that give both consistency and individuality to a person’s behaviour.” Gives us individuality and differences in chevaour, consistently of behavioirity.
Trait: person’s typical style of thinking,feeling, and acting in different kinds of situ-ations and at different times” and each traitis a personality dimension which repre-sents a most essential way in which peoplevary (Costa and McCrae 1988) Stable over time and differen stiatuions Avaliaibiltiy of trait helps predict certain bevhaiours
Temperament: biologically based differences? The question is that is temperament apart of personality Models of temperament often include four trait dimensions: surgency/sociability, negative emotionality, persistence/effortful control, and activity level.
Correlation with Society Conscienticousness and emotionally stasbility are strong predictors of job performance and wages Personality traits are pretty important for people with lower levels fo job complexity or education level Valid self reporting tool, can be used to enhance academic acahievement to tailor teching methods to individuals in school settings
This is incredibly important as people have started turning to personality tests within job interviews, with the popularity of tests like MBTI
According to Undercover Recruiter, the cost of a bad hire can reach up to 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings. Leadership IQ found that 46% of newly-hired employees will be deemed failures within 18 months after starting.
But, this can easily be gamed (already happens unintentionally with social desirability bias)
. Social desirability bias, for instance, could help explain why Conscientiousness and Agreeableness are the most problematic PTs and why Conscientiousness has little predictive power in the survey data.
Also associated with:
Acedmic performance
Sense of coherence
Job burnout
Psychotism in youth
Knockoff tests Developed due to the failures or oversights of the current model Big two traits -> Plasticity (extraversion and openness) and Stability (neuroticism, agreeableness, and conscientiousness) — show that Plasticity has a more robust and stronger association with creativity than Stability Also extraversion and anxiety (Wiggins) Three factor model Psychoticsm Extraversion And neuroticism Four factor Agreeablness, neuroticism, conscienticousness, culture-intellicet (wider than openness to experience) Other big five traits sincerity, excitement, compe-tence, sophistication, and ruggedness Big six traits (HEXACO) Honesty-Humility (H), Emotionality (E), Extraversion (X), Agreeableness (A), Conscientiousness (C), and Openness to Experience (O). Big seven traits positive emotionality, negative emotionality, dependability, agreeability, conventionality, positive valence, and negative valence. Adjustment, ambition, sociability, likeability, prudence, intellectance, and school success Big ten traits (jordan peterson) Conscientiousness is about Industriousness and Orderliness Agreeableness is about Politeness and Compassion Neuroticism is about Withdrawal and Volatility Openness to Experience is about Intellect and “Openness” proper Extraversion is about Assertiveness and Enthusiasm
Also has lead to: Psychopathology Five (PSY-5), (Harkness et al. 2002), Alternative Five-Factor Model (2012), and Chinese Person-ality Assessment Inventory (CPAI)
CPAI Harmony, Ren Qing (relationship orientation), modernization, thrift, Ah-Q mentality (defensiveness), graciousness, trustworthiness, face, family orientation, and somatization (expression of distress) big four traits: Dependability, Chinese Tradition, Social Potency, Individualism
Pscyhopathy Five Aggressiveness, psychoticism, disconstraint, negative emotionality/ neuroticism, introversion/low positive emotionality Psychopathology
Alternative Impulsive sensation seeking, aggression-hostility, activity, sociability, neuroticism-anxiety
Other uses of Big Five Alzheimers -> decrease in conscientiousness, and icnreqse in nuetoricms, crease in extraversion, openness, and agreeableness
Drug users Heroion = High N, O, Down A, C Ecstacy = High E, O, Lower, A, C
Mental disorders re just linked ot neurociism (development), conscienticousness and is the strongest personaltiy predictr of reduced morality, makes bad health choices. Also low extroversion. No disorders associated with openness. Neutocism is also shown to have worse health outcomes.
Can affect teaching styles(?) Openness
HEXACO vs Big Five Big five has limited ability to identify dark traid (psychologay, narcissism, and machiavellianism) Overlap with agreeableness and emotionallity between two tests They define subtarits slightly differently, affecting intererpation, and offers ‘better description’
Big five and mbti